We’ll just have to assume for the time being that Penn State University knows what it’s doing. Large assumption, I know. But there is no other choice.

It’s unfair to James Franklin to make any other judgment at this point. The only judgment should be no judgment.

I will I say I would not have had the cojones to hire the Vanderbilt football coach if I was athletics director Dave Joyner or president Rodney Erickson. Not when their university is attempting to dig out from the crater of a massive child-rape scandal. Not when Vanderbilt is in the middle of its own rape case, as yet unresolved and much of the evidence ordered withheld by the court.

But we must assume that Joyner and Erickson and the search committee Penn State assembled performed exhaustive research to prove beyond even a smidgen of doubt that Franklin was totally uninvolved in any cover-up that might have occurred after four of his players allegedly gang-raped in June a young woman one of them had supposedly been dating.

The district attorney involved has so far cleared Franklin’s name. This must be the final word on Franklin at this point. It’s totally unfair to question his integrity. The court can expose and decide the rest.

I was the first one who reported that Franklin was interested in the job and that the initial feeling was mutual from Penn State. That was back before Christmas when no one knew for sure if Bill O’Brien would accept an NFL position.

I remember being pleased to hear that this exciting and enthusiastic young coach would consider PSU if, indeed, the job came open. I knew Franklin had a terrific reputation as a coaching mind and innovator on the front edge of college football, a guy who knows quarterbacks, was one himself at East Stroudsburg and could ably continue Christian Hackenberg’s development.

As a reporter, you want to cover coaches like this – vibrant men full of passion for their work and the expertise to implement their plans. It’s fun to be around them and invigorating to be around their work.

Clearly, there’s evidence he can get the most out of his players, too. College kids can be called young men but they really are just puppy dogs in a lot of ways. They want a vocal leader who gets as juiced about the game as they do. They respond to such emotion.

The more research I did on Franklin, the more I discovered he possessed all of these qualities. He loved his work, he liked people and he was able to infuse them with his zest and get the most out of them.

When you’re working primarily within one college conference, on one beat and that team’s opponents from week to week, you gain a degree of tunnel vision and the rest of the college football picture becomes translucent to some extent. So, I don’t remember at that point in December having really noticed the rape case involving former Vanderbilt players. When I could, I began reading up on it. When I could tell Franklin was becoming a favorite for the Penn State job, I began talking to people familiar with it and familiar with Franklin.

If you haven’t heard much either, here are the raw outlines:

Brandon Vandenburg, a 20-year-old junior college transfer from Indio, Calif., along with; Cory Batey, 19, of Nashville; Brandon Eric Banks, 19, from Brandywine, Md.; and Jaborian “Tip” McKenzie, 18, from Woodville, Miss., have each been charged with five counts of aggravated rape and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. Vandenburg also is charged with one count of unlawful photography and tampering with evidence. They were indicted Aug. 9. All were recruited by Franklin and his staff. They were summarily tossed off the team and barred from the VU campus.

Police have charged the men with on June 23 raping an unconscious 21-year-old female student inside Vandenburg's dormitory room; the alleged victim was Vandenburg’s girlfriend. All four ex-players have pleaded not guilty. It is still undecided whether the case will come to trial or reach a plea agreement.

A fifth former player, Chris Boyd, has already pleaded guilty to trying to cover up the assault. Defense attorneys have filed a request for any evidence of text messages between players and coaches, either Franklin or members of his staff. The court has already ordered that any videos or photographs involved in the case remain in the hands of the defense team.

So, there’s a lot that is unknown. If the case does not come to trial, a lot will probably never be known. If it does, Franklin could be called to testify.

Presumably, Penn State and the people Erickson and Joyner surely assigned to investigate the case returned with squeaky-clean reports on Franklin. And if such an assessment turns out to be accurate, then maybe his hiring and tenure at Penn State will be a successful one. And then, good for him, good for them, good for everybody.

I have made it known already that I would not have gone in this direction were I in the Penn State administrators’ shoes. But then, I didn’t have a committee of six or an unlimited budget for vetting the candidates or any former FBI agents at my disposal.

Simply knowing what I know, I would have sprung for Duke’s David Cutcliffe as a first choice or Miami’s Al Golden or former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Munchak as a secondary ones.

On the surface, Cutcliffe looks to me like exactly what Penn State needs – a quarterback guru who coached both Manning brothers and who in his latest gig built an even more astounding miracle from dirt and twigs at Duke than anything that happened at Vandy. Cutcliffe did it with 2- and 3-star talents under stringent academic requirements.

I am confident through very good sources that Golden would have accepted any reasonable offer. This is a school that has bigger problems than just winning football games. It needs a fence-mender who will stick around a while to do the work of an ambassador, not just a football coach, and truly value that labor as a figurehead of his alma mater. I think Golden could have fulfilled that role.

Then again, we don’t have the vetting resources Penn State does. If so armed, who knows what we'd find about our favorites? Maybe Cutcliffe is running shine off his back porch in North Carolina. Maybe Golden has 12 wives out in Utah.

Anyway, this isn’t my choice. It’s not yours. It’s Penn State’s and the men who run the university. I would not have been so bold to make it. I value too much a good night’s sleep.

But they have chosen James Franklin. They must be sure about it, right?